Contents

The Wuhua dialect is characterized by the pronunciation of several voiced Middle Chinesequ-sheng (fourth tone) syllables of Moiyen dialect in the Shang-sheng (third tone). The tone-level of the yin-ping is a rising /13/, /35/ or /24/ instead of the low-level /11/ usually found in Meixian. In Wuhua-concentrated areas of Northern Bao'an and Eastern Dongguan, the same Meixian dialect tone level of the yang-ping is found. Two sets of fricatives and affricates (z, c, s, zh, ch, sh, s / ts’ / s, [ts], [tsh], [s] and [ts], [tsh], [s] and [tʃ ], [tʃh], [ ʃ ]) appear, similar to Mandarin Chinese. The distinctive "y" final is found in the Yuebei (Northern Guangdong) Hakka group and Sichuan group. Retroflexed initials in 知 (Zhi series) “Knowledge”, 曉 (Xiao group) “Dawn”, and part of 溪 (Xi) “Brook”, and poor usage of medials in Grade III and closed finals. Wuhua dialect exhibits “latter-word” tone sandhi. Phonologically, Wuhua showcases a north-south separation while lexically depicting an east- and middle-Guangdong separation, showing similarities to inland and coastal Hakka dialects. Lexically it shows east-west separation in Wuhua, which is quite different from the phonological point of view. Outwardly, lexicons in Wuhua show that the Wuhua dialect is on the diglossia that separates east and middle Guangdong. This way, the lexicons distinguish coast-side dialects from inland ones. The Wuhua dialect is transitional, no matter how it is seen historically or geographically. Overall, the Wuhua Hakka dialect is very similar to the prestige of the Moiyen (Meixian) Hakka dialect.

In the Wuhua Hakka dialect group, Qusheng consists of only QingQu syllables, Shangsheng is a combination of Qingshang and Zhuoqu Characters.

The Hakka Classification according to Hashimoto J, Mantaro; the Wuhua Accent falls into Hakka Dialects with a high rising staccato and High level tone, a Falling tone contour for tone 4 and a rising feature for tone 2

The Wuhua patois merges Yangqu with the Shang tone so that voiced characters of MC departing tones have the Shang tone, not Qu. In addition, the Meixian group has a Yangping tone value of 11, but Wuhua has the value of 13, 35 or 24. Most varieties of Jiaying SubDialect (Tue-Tai) belong to the Meixian patois, but those in northern Guangdong and Sichuan and some dialects in western Guangdong belong to the Wuhua patois.

Wuhua County is located in the upper reaches of the Han River. The southeast border of the county is adjacent to Fengshun, Jiexi, and Lufeng. Heyuan and Zijin are located on the southwest borders. The northwest border is connected to Longchuan and the northeast to Xingning. Due to the resulting language contact, Wuhua is affected by the dialectal assimilation of the surrounding areas.

The Wuhua dialect can be found in Wuhua County, Jiexi County, Northern Bao'An (formerly Xin'An (Sin-On), presently called Shenzhen), and Eastern Dongguan, in Guangdong Province, It can also be observed in Yuebei or Northern Guangdong around Shaoguan, as well as in Sichuan Province, and Tonggu County in Jiangxi Province.

Taiwan is also home to the Wuhua Hakka people who migrated from South Wuhua County during the Qing dynasty. Taiwanese Wuhua has observed many changes in its initials, finals, and lexicons. As a result, it shares characteristics with the neighboring Sixian (四縣) and Hailu (海陸) Dialects. The tones remained the same. Minority languages tend to assimilate with their superiors as observed in the Wuhua dialect of Taiwan. The Changle dialect originates in its eponym, the county of Changle (now Wuhua). Currently, speakers of the Yongding and Changle dialects have left their own families. Due to this, there are few dialects that are used in present-day Taiwan, including but not limited to prominent Sixian and Hailu dialects.

The Wuhua group, merges the Middle Chinese characters of the Qu tone into the Shang tone. There are usually two sets of fricatives and affricatives, similar to that of Mandarin. The Yangping is usually a low rising tone of value 13. The rounded vowel [y] is common in Yuebei and Sichuan.

The Wuhua Dialect in the County itself has four accents: The North Accent (Huá Chéng, Qí Lǐng), The Central/Lowland Accent (Tán Xià, Zhuǎn Shuǐ, Héng Bēi, Shuǐ Zhài, Hédōng, and Guō Tián), The Western Accent (Zhǎng Bù, Dàtián), and The Southern/Highland Accent (Ān liú, Zhōu Jiāng, Shuāng Huá, Méilín, Huáyáng, Mián Yáng, as well as Lóngcūn).

Wuhua County Dialect is also prominent in Zijin County: the Nánlù Accent includes the towns of Yangtou, Su District, Nanling, Shuidun Township, Longwo Market Town, and some other villages in the market town area. The above areas are adjacent to Wuhua County and the villagers utilize the Wuhua Accent, This contact area serves as a accent/dialect continuum between Wuhua and Zijin Hakka dialects / accents

The Yuebei group is the most dominant dialect in the rural area of Northern Guangdong around Shaoguan. (c. 2 million speakers)

Jiexihua is spoken by the inhabitants of Jiexi county in the Guangdong Province. (c. 500,000 speakers)

Dongguan Hakka is spoken by Hakka inhabitants, in the Eastern part of Dongguan county and North of Bao’an county. This accent has the Yangping as a level tone of value 11. (c. 60T speakers)

The Sichuan Hakka group or “Tu-Guangdonghua” is spoken by the migrants from Meizhou, Guangdong in Sichuan (c. 1-2 million speakers)

Tongguhua is spoken by the people in and around Tonggu county, Jiangxi Province. (c. 1 million speakers)

The Changle Accent was once used in Taiwan as one of the seven major Hakka accents. There are other accents such as Sixian, Hoiliuk Yongding, Changle/Wuhua, Dabu, Raoping, and Chao'An. It was introduced to the territory by settlers from Changle County (present-day Wuhua) in Jiaying (present-day Meizhou) and immigrants from Yong'an County, Present-day Zijin County (Huizhou Prefecture). Its language is akin to the accents adjacent to the Qin River near Anliu and its surrounding area, in the south of Wuhua County located in present-day mainland China. However, in the Qu Lao Keng area in Yangmei District (specifically Taoyuan City) on Taiwan, there are still many families who utilize the Changle Accent.

1.
China
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China, officially the Peoples Republic of China, is a unitary sovereign state in East Asia and the worlds most populous country, with a population of over 1.381 billion. The state is governed by the Communist Party of China and its capital is Beijing, the countrys major urban areas include Shanghai, Guangzhou, Beijing, Chongqing, Shenzhen, Tianjin and Hong Kong. China is a power and a major regional power within Asia. Chinas landscape is vast and diverse, ranging from forest steppes, the Himalaya, Karakoram, Pamir and Tian Shan mountain ranges separate China from much of South and Central Asia. The Yangtze and Yellow Rivers, the third and sixth longest in the world, respectively, Chinas coastline along the Pacific Ocean is 14,500 kilometers long and is bounded by the Bohai, Yellow, East China and South China seas. China emerged as one of the worlds earliest civilizations in the basin of the Yellow River in the North China Plain. For millennia, Chinas political system was based on hereditary monarchies known as dynasties, in 1912, the Republic of China replaced the last dynasty and ruled the Chinese mainland until 1949, when it was defeated by the communist Peoples Liberation Army in the Chinese Civil War. The Communist Party established the Peoples Republic of China in Beijing on 1 October 1949, both the ROC and PRC continue to claim to be the legitimate government of all China, though the latter has more recognition in the world and controls more territory. China had the largest economy in the world for much of the last two years, during which it has seen cycles of prosperity and decline. Since the introduction of reforms in 1978, China has become one of the worlds fastest-growing major economies. As of 2016, it is the worlds second-largest economy by nominal GDP, China is also the worlds largest exporter and second-largest importer of goods. China is a nuclear weapons state and has the worlds largest standing army. The PRC is a member of the United Nations, as it replaced the ROC as a permanent member of the U. N. Security Council in 1971. China is also a member of numerous formal and informal multilateral organizations, including the WTO, APEC, BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the BCIM, the English name China is first attested in Richard Edens 1555 translation of the 1516 journal of the Portuguese explorer Duarte Barbosa. The demonym, that is, the name for the people, Portuguese China is thought to derive from Persian Chīn, and perhaps ultimately from Sanskrit Cīna. Cīna was first used in early Hindu scripture, including the Mahābhārata, there are, however, other suggestions for the derivation of China. The official name of the state is the Peoples Republic of China. The shorter form is China Zhōngguó, from zhōng and guó and it was then applied to the area around Luoyi during the Eastern Zhou and then to Chinas Central Plain before being used as an occasional synonym for the state under the Qing

2.
Language family
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A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestral language or parental language, called the proto-language of that family. Linguists therefore describe the languages within a language family as being genetically related. Estimates of the number of living languages vary from 5,000 to 8,000, depending on the precision of ones definition of language, the 2013 edition of Ethnologue catalogs just over 7,000 living human languages. A living language is one that is used as the primary form of communication of a group of people. There are also dead and extinct languages, as well as some that are still insufficiently studied to be classified. Membership of languages in a family is established by comparative linguistics. Sister languages are said to have a genetic or genealogical relationship, speakers of a language family belong to a common speech community. The divergence of a proto-language into daughter languages typically occurs through geographical separation, individuals belonging to other speech communities may also adopt languages from a different language family through the language shift process. Genealogically related languages present shared retentions, that is, features of the proto-language that cannot be explained by chance or borrowing, for example, Germanic languages are Germanic in that they share vocabulary and grammatical features that are not believed to have been present in the Proto-Indo-European language. These features are believed to be innovations that took place in Proto-Germanic, language families can be divided into smaller phylogenetic units, conventionally referred to as branches of the family because the history of a language family is often represented as a tree diagram. A family is a unit, all its members derive from a common ancestor. Some taxonomists restrict the term family to a level. Those who affix such labels also subdivide branches into groups, a top-level family is often called a phylum or stock. The closer the branches are to other, the closer the languages will be related. For example, the Celtic, Germanic, Slavic, Romance, there is a remarkably similar pattern shown by the linguistic tree and the genetic tree of human ancestry that was verified statistically. Languages interpreted in terms of the phylogenetic tree of human languages are transmitted to a great extent vertically as opposed to horizontally. A speech variety may also be considered either a language or a dialect depending on social or political considerations, thus, different sources give sometimes wildly different accounts of the number of languages within a family. Classifications of the Japonic family, for example, range from one language to nearly twenty, most of the worlds languages are known to be related to others

3.
Sino-Tibetan
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The Sino-Tibetan languages, in a few sources also known as Tibeto-Burman or Trans-Himalayan, are a family of more than 400 languages spoken in East Asia, Southeast Asia and South Asia. The family is only to the Indo-European languages in terms of the number of native speakers. The Sino-Tibetan languages with the most native speakers are the varieties of Chinese, Burmese, many Sino-Tibetan languages are spoken by small communities in remote mountain areas and as such are poorly documented. Several low-level groupings are well established, but the structure of the family remains unclear. A genetic relationship between Chinese, Tibetan, Burmese and other languages was first proposed in the early 19th century, and is now broadly accepted. The initial focus on languages of civilizations with long literary traditions has been broadened to include less widely spoken languages, some of which have recently, or never. However, the reconstruction of the family is less developed than for families such as Indo-European or Austroasiatic. Difficulties have included the great diversity of the languages, the lack of inflection in many of them, in addition, many of the smaller languages are spoken in mountainous areas that are difficult to access, and are often also sensitive border zones. During the 18th century, several scholars had noticed parallels between Tibetan and Burmese, both languages with extensive literary traditions. Early in the century, Brian Houghton Hodgson and others noted that many non-literary languages of the highlands of northeast India. The name Tibeto-Burman was first applied to this group in 1856 by James Richardson Logan, the third volume of the Linguistic Survey of India, edited by Sten Konow, was devoted to the Tibeto-Burman languages of British India. Studies of the Indo-Chinese languages of Southeast Asia from the century by Logan and others revealed that they comprised four families, Tibeto-Burman, Tai, Mon–Khmer. Julius Klaproth had noted in 1823 that Burmese, Tibetan and Chinese all shared common basic vocabulary but that Thai, Mon, Ernst Kuhn envisaged a group with two branches, Chinese-Siamese and Tibeto-Burman. August Conrady called this group Indo-Chinese in his influential 1896 classification, Conradys terminology was widely used, but there was uncertainty regarding his exclusion of Vietnamese. Franz Nikolaus Finck in 1909 placed Karen as a branch of Chinese-Siamese. Jean Przyluski introduced the term sino-tibétain as the title of his chapter on the group in Meillet and he retained Conradys two branches of Tibeto-Burman and Sino-Daic, with Miao–Yao included within Daic. The English translation Sino-Tibetan first appeared in a note by Przyluski. In 1935, the anthropologist Alfred Kroeber started the Sino-Tibetan Philology Project, funded by the Works Project Administration and based at the University of California, the project was supervised by Robert Shafer until late 1938, and then by Paul K. Benedict

4.
Varieties of Chinese
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Chinese, also known as Sinitic, is a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family consisting of hundreds of local language varieties, many of which are not mutually intelligible. The differences are similar to those within the Romance languages, with particularly strong in the more rugged southeast. These varieties, often called dialects, have been classified into seven to ten groups, the largest being Mandarin, Wu, Min, Chinese varieties differ most in their phonology, and to a lesser extent in vocabulary and syntax. Southern varieties tend to have fewer initial consonants than northern and central varieties, all have phonemic tones, with northern varieties tending to have fewer distinctions than southern ones. Many have tone sandhi, with the most complex patterns in the area from Zhejiang to eastern Guangdong. Standard Chinese takes its phonology from the Beijing dialect, with vocabulary from the Mandarin group and it is the sole official language of both China and Taiwan, one of the four official languages of Singapore, and one of the six official languages of the United Nations. At the end of the 2nd millennium BC, a form of Chinese was spoken in an area around the lower Wei River. From there it expanded eastwards across the North China Plain to Shandong and then south into the valley of the Yangtze River, as the language spread, it replaced formerly dominant languages in those areas, and regional differences grew. Simultaneously, especially in periods of unity, there was a tendency to promote a central standard to facilitate communication between people from different regions. The first evidence of variation is found in texts from the Spring. At that time, the Zhou royal domain, though no longer politically powerful, the Fangyan is devoted to differences in vocabulary between regions. Commentaries from the Eastern Han period contain much discussion of local variations in pronunciation, the Qieyun rhyme book noted wide variation in pronunciation between regions, and set out to define a standard pronunciation for reading the classics. This standard, known as Middle Chinese, is believed to be a based on the reading traditions of northern and southern capitals. The North China Plain provided few barriers to migration, leading to relative linguistic homogeneity over an area in northern China. In contrast, the mountains and rivers of southern China have spawned the other six major groups of Chinese languages, with great internal diversity, until the mid-20th century, most Chinese people spoke only their local language. As a practical measure, officials of the Ming and Qing dynasties carried out the administration of the using a common language based on Mandarin varieties. Knowledge of this language was thus essential for an official career, in the early years of the Republic of China, Literary Chinese was replaced as the written standard by written vernacular Chinese, which was based on northern dialects. In the 1930s a standard language was adopted, with its pronunciation based on the Beijing dialect

5.
Hakka Chinese
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Hakka is not mutually intelligible with Yue, Wu, Southern Min, Mandarin or other branches of Chinese, and itself contains a few mutually unintellegible varieties. It is most closely related to Gan and is classified as a variety of Gan. There is also a possibility that the similarities are just a result of shared areal features, Taiwan, where Hakka is the native language of a significant minority of the islands residents, is a center for the study and preservation of the language. Pronunciation differences exist between the Taiwanese Hakka dialects and Mainland Chinas Hakka dialects, even in Taiwan, two local varieties of Hakka exist. The Meixian dialect of northeast Guangdong in China has been taken as the dialect by the Peoples Republic of China. The Guangdong Provincial Education Department created a romanization of Moiyen in 1960. The name of the Hakka people who are the predominant original native speakers of the variety literally means guest families or guest people, Hak 客 means guest, and ka 家 means family. Among themselves, Hakka people variously called their language Hak-ka-fa 客家話, Hak-fa, 客話, Tu-gong-dung-fa 土廣東話, literally Native Guangdong language, and Ngai-fa 我話, My/our language. The forebears of the Hakka came from present-day Central Plains provinces of Henan and Shaanxi, the presence of many archaic features occur in modern Hakka, including final consonants -p -t -k, as are found in other modern southern Chinese varieties, but which have been lost in Mandarin. Due to the migration of its speakers, Hakka may have influenced by other language areas through which the Hakka-speaking forebears migrated. For instance, common vocabulary is found in Hakka, Min, in recent times, many She people have become Hakka speakers. A regular pattern of change can generally be detected in Hakka, as in most Chinese varieties. Some examples, Characters such as 武 or 屋, are pronounced roughly mwio and uk in Early Middle Chinese, have an initial v phoneme in Hakka, being vu and vuk in Hakka respectively. Like in Mandarin, labiodentalisation process also changed mj- to a sound in Hakka before grave vowels. Middle Chinese initial phonemes /ɲ/ of the characters 人 and 日, among others, for comparison, in Mandarin, /ɲ/ became r-, while in Cantonese, it merged with initial /j/. The initial consonant phoneme exhibited by the character 話 is pronounced f or v in Hakka, the initial consonant of 學 hɔk usually corresponds with an h approximant in Hakka and a voiceless alveo-palatal fricative in Mandarin. Hakka has as many regional dialects as there are counties with Hakka speakers as the majority, some of these Hakka dialects are not mutually intelligible with each other. Surrounding Meixian are the counties of Pingyuan, Dabu, Jiaoling, Xingning, Wuhua, each is said to have its own special phonological points of interest

6.
International Phonetic Alphabet
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The International Phonetic Alphabet is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin alphabet. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association as a representation of the sounds of spoken language. The IPA is used by lexicographers, foreign students and teachers, linguists, speech-language pathologists, singers, actors, constructed language creators. The IPA is designed to represent only those qualities of speech that are part of language, phones, phonemes, intonation. IPA symbols are composed of one or more elements of two types, letters and diacritics. For example, the sound of the English letter ⟨t⟩ may be transcribed in IPA with a letter, or with a letter plus diacritics. Often, slashes are used to signal broad or phonemic transcription, thus, /t/ is less specific than, occasionally letters or diacritics are added, removed, or modified by the International Phonetic Association. As of the most recent change in 2005, there are 107 letters,52 diacritics and these are shown in the current IPA chart, posted below in this article and at the website of the IPA. In 1886, a group of French and British language teachers, led by the French linguist Paul Passy, for example, the sound was originally represented with the letter ⟨c⟩ in English, but with the digraph ⟨ch⟩ in French. However, in 1888, the alphabet was revised so as to be uniform across languages, the idea of making the IPA was first suggested by Otto Jespersen in a letter to Paul Passy. It was developed by Alexander John Ellis, Henry Sweet, Daniel Jones, since its creation, the IPA has undergone a number of revisions. After major revisions and expansions in 1900 and 1932, the IPA remained unchanged until the International Phonetic Association Kiel Convention in 1989, a minor revision took place in 1993 with the addition of four letters for mid central vowels and the removal of letters for voiceless implosives. The alphabet was last revised in May 2005 with the addition of a letter for a labiodental flap, apart from the addition and removal of symbols, changes to the IPA have consisted largely in renaming symbols and categories and in modifying typefaces. Extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet for speech pathology were created in 1990, the general principle of the IPA is to provide one letter for each distinctive sound, although this practice is not followed if the sound itself is complex. There are no letters that have context-dependent sound values, as do hard, finally, the IPA does not usually have separate letters for two sounds if no known language makes a distinction between them, a property known as selectiveness. These are organized into a chart, the chart displayed here is the chart as posted at the website of the IPA. The letters chosen for the IPA are meant to harmonize with the Latin alphabet, for this reason, most letters are either Latin or Greek, or modifications thereof. Some letters are neither, for example, the letter denoting the glottal stop, ⟨ʔ⟩, has the form of a question mark

7.
Specials (Unicode block)
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Specials is a short Unicode block allocated at the very end of the Basic Multilingual Plane, at U+FFF0–FFFF. Of these 16 codepoints, five are assigned as of Unicode 9, U+FFFD � REPLACEMENT CHARACTER used to replace an unknown, unrecognized or unrepresentable character U+FFFE <noncharacter-FFFE> not a character. FFFE and FFFF are not unassigned in the sense. They can be used to guess a texts encoding scheme, since any text containing these is by not a correctly encoded Unicode text. The replacement character � is a found in the Unicode standard at codepoint U+FFFD in the Specials table. It is used to indicate problems when a system is unable to render a stream of data to a correct symbol and it is usually seen when the data is invalid and does not match any character, Consider a text file containing the German word für in the ISO-8859-1 encoding. This file is now opened with an editor that assumes the input is UTF-8. The first and last byte are valid UTF-8 encodings of ASCII, therefore, a text editor could replace this byte with the replacement character symbol to produce a valid string of Unicode code points. The whole string now displays like this, f�r, a poorly implemented text editor might save the replacement in UTF-8 form, the text file data will then look like this, 0x66 0xEF 0xBF 0xBD 0x72, which will be displayed in ISO-8859-1 as fï¿½r. Since the replacement is the same for all errors this makes it impossible to recover the original character, a better design is to preserve the original bytes, including the error, and only convert to the replacement when displaying the text. This will allow the text editor to save the original byte sequence and it has become increasingly common for software to interpret invalid UTF-8 by guessing the bytes are in another byte-based encoding such as ISO-8859-1. This allows correct display of both valid and invalid UTF-8 pasted together, Unicode control characters UTF-8 Mojibake Unicodes Specials table Decodeunicodes entry for the replacement character

8.
Unicode
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Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the worlds writing systems. As of June 2016, the most recent version is Unicode 9.0, the standard is maintained by the Unicode Consortium. Unicodes success at unifying character sets has led to its widespread, the standard has been implemented in many recent technologies, including modern operating systems, XML, Java, and the. NET Framework. Unicode can be implemented by different character encodings, the most commonly used encodings are UTF-8, UTF-16 and the now-obsolete UCS-2. UTF-8 uses one byte for any ASCII character, all of which have the same values in both UTF-8 and ASCII encoding, and up to four bytes for other characters. UCS-2 uses a 16-bit code unit for each character but cannot encode every character in the current Unicode standard, UTF-16 extends UCS-2, using one 16-bit unit for the characters that were representable in UCS-2 and two 16-bit units to handle each of the additional characters. Many traditional character encodings share a common problem in that they allow bilingual computer processing, Unicode, in intent, encodes the underlying characters—graphemes and grapheme-like units—rather than the variant glyphs for such characters. In the case of Chinese characters, this leads to controversies over distinguishing the underlying character from its variant glyphs. In text processing, Unicode takes the role of providing a unique code point—a number, in other words, Unicode represents a character in an abstract way and leaves the visual rendering to other software, such as a web browser or word processor. This simple aim becomes complicated, however, because of concessions made by Unicodes designers in the hope of encouraging a more rapid adoption of Unicode, the first 256 code points were made identical to the content of ISO-8859-1 so as to make it trivial to convert existing western text. For other examples, see duplicate characters in Unicode and he explained that he name Unicode is intended to suggest a unique, unified, universal encoding. In this document, entitled Unicode 88, Becker outlined a 16-bit character model, Unicode could be roughly described as wide-body ASCII that has been stretched to 16 bits to encompass the characters of all the worlds living languages. In a properly engineered design,16 bits per character are more than sufficient for this purpose, Unicode aims in the first instance at the characters published in modern text, whose number is undoubtedly far below 214 =16,384. By the end of 1990, most of the work on mapping existing character encoding standards had been completed, the Unicode Consortium was incorporated in California on January 3,1991, and in October 1991, the first volume of the Unicode standard was published. The second volume, covering Han ideographs, was published in June 1992, in 1996, a surrogate character mechanism was implemented in Unicode 2.0, so that Unicode was no longer restricted to 16 bits. The Microsoft TrueType specification version 1.0 from 1992 used the name Apple Unicode instead of Unicode for the Platform ID in the naming table, Unicode defines a codespace of 1,114,112 code points in the range 0hex to 10FFFFhex. Normally a Unicode code point is referred to by writing U+ followed by its hexadecimal number, for code points in the Basic Multilingual Plane, four digits are used, for code points outside the BMP, five or six digits are used, as required. Code points in Planes 1 through 16 are accessed as surrogate pairs in UTF-16, within each plane, characters are allocated within named blocks of related characters

9.
Simplified Chinese characters
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Simplified Chinese characters are standardized Chinese characters prescribed in the Table of General Standard Chinese Characters for use in mainland China. Along with traditional Chinese characters, it is one of the two character sets of the contemporary Chinese written language. The government of the Peoples Republic of China in mainland China has promoted them for use in printing since the 1950s and 1960s in an attempt to increase literacy and they are officially used in the Peoples Republic of China and Singapore. Traditional Chinese characters are used in Hong Kong, Macau. Overseas Chinese communities generally tend to use traditional characters, Simplified Chinese characters may be referred to by their official name above or colloquially. Strictly, the latter refers to simplifications of character structure or body, character forms that have existed for thousands of years alongside regular, Simplified character forms were created by decreasing the number of strokes and simplifying the forms of a sizable proportion of traditional Chinese characters. Some simplifications were based on popular cursive forms embodying graphic or phonetic simplifications of the traditional forms, some characters were simplified by applying regular rules, for example, by replacing all occurrences of a certain component with a simplified version of the component. Variant characters with the pronunciation and identical meaning were reduced to a single standardized character. Finally, many characters were left untouched by simplification, and are identical between the traditional and simplified Chinese orthographies. Some simplified characters are very dissimilar to and unpredictably different from traditional characters and this often leads opponents not well-versed in the method of simplification to conclude that the overall process of character simplification is also arbitrary. In reality, the methods and rules of simplification are few, on the other hand, proponents of simplification often flaunt a few choice simplified characters as ingenious inventions, when in fact these have existed for hundreds of years as ancient variants. However, the Chinese government never officially dropped its goal of further simplification in the future, in August 2009, the PRC began collecting public comments for a modified list of simplified characters. The new Table of General Standard Chinese Characters consisting of 8,105 characters was promulgated by the State Council of the Peoples Republic of China on June 5,2013, cursive written text almost always includes character simplification. Simplified forms used in print have always existed, they date back to as early as the Qin dynasty, One of the earliest proponents of character simplification was Lubi Kui, who proposed in 1909 that simplified characters should be used in education. In the years following the May Fourth Movement in 1919, many anti-imperialist Chinese intellectuals sought ways to modernise China, Traditional culture and values such as Confucianism were challenged. Soon, people in the Movement started to cite the traditional Chinese writing system as an obstacle in modernising China and it was suggested that the Chinese writing system should be either simplified or completely abolished. Fu Sinian, a leader of the May Fourth Movement, called Chinese characters the writing of ox-demons, lu Xun, a renowned Chinese author in the 20th century, stated that, If Chinese characters are not destroyed, then China will die. Recent commentators have claimed that Chinese characters were blamed for the problems in China during that time

10.
Traditional Chinese characters
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Traditional Chinese characters are Chinese characters in any character set that does not contain newly created characters or character substitutions performed after 1946. They are most commonly the characters in the character sets of Taiwan, of Hong Kong. Currently, a number of overseas Chinese online newspapers allow users to switch between both sets. In contrast, simplified Chinese characters are used in mainland China, Singapore, the debate on traditional and simplified Chinese characters has been a long-running issue among Chinese communities. Although simplified characters are taught and endorsed by the government of Mainland China, Traditional characters are used informally in regions in China primarily in handwriting and also used for inscriptions and religious text. They are often retained in logos or graphics to evoke yesteryear, nonetheless, the vast majority of media and communications in China is dominated by simplified characters. Taiwan has never adopted Simplified Chinese characters since it is ruled by the Republic of China, the use of simplified characters in official documents is even prohibited by the government in Taiwan. Simplified characters are not well understood in general, although some stroke simplifications that have incorporated into Simplified Chinese are in common use in handwriting. For example, while the name of Taiwan is written as 臺灣, similarly, in Hong Kong and Macau, Traditional Chinese has been the legal written form since colonial times. In recent years, because of the influx of mainland Chinese tourists, today, even government websites use simplified Chinese, as they answer to the Beijing government. This has led to concerns by residents to protect their local heritage. In Southeast Asia, the Chinese Filipino community continues to be one of the most conservative regarding simplification, while major public universities are teaching simplified characters, many well-established Chinese schools still use traditional characters. Publications like the Chinese Commercial News, World News, and United Daily News still use traditional characters, on the other hand, the Philippine Chinese Daily uses simplified. Aside from local newspapers, magazines from Hong Kong, such as the Yazhou Zhoukan, are found in some bookstores. In case of film or television subtitles on DVD, the Chinese dub that is used in Philippines is the same as the one used in Taiwan and this is because the DVDs belongs to DVD Region Code 3. Hence, most of the subtitles are in Traditional Characters, overseas Chinese in the United States have long used traditional characters. A major influx of Chinese immigrants to the United States occurred during the half of the 19th century. Therefore, the majority of Chinese language signage in the United States, including street signs, Traditional Chinese characters are called several different names within the Chinese-speaking world

11.
Pinyin
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Pinyin, or Hànyǔ Pīnyīn, is the official romanization system for Standard Chinese in mainland China, Malaysia, Singapore, and Taiwan. It is often used to teach Standard Chinese, which is written using Chinese characters. The system includes four diacritics denoting tones, Pinyin without tone marks is used to spell Chinese names and words in languages written with the Latin alphabet, and also in certain computer input methods to enter Chinese characters. The pinyin system was developed in the 1950s by many linguists, including Zhou Youguang and it was published by the Chinese government in 1958 and revised several times. The International Organization for Standardization adopted pinyin as a standard in 1982. The system was adopted as the standard in Taiwan in 2009. The word Hànyǔ means the language of the Han people. In 1605, the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci published Xizi Qiji in Beijing and this was the first book to use the Roman alphabet to write the Chinese language. Twenty years later, another Jesuit in China, Nicolas Trigault, neither book had much immediate impact on the way in which Chinese thought about their writing system, and the romanizations they described were intended more for Westerners than for the Chinese. One of the earliest Chinese thinkers to relate Western alphabets to Chinese was late Ming to early Qing Dynasty scholar-official, the first late Qing reformer to propose that China adopt a system of spelling was Song Shu. A student of the great scholars Yu Yue and Zhang Taiyan, Song had been to Japan and observed the effect of the kana syllabaries. This galvanized him into activity on a number of fronts, one of the most important being reform of the script, while Song did not himself actually create a system for spelling Sinitic languages, his discussion proved fertile and led to a proliferation of schemes for phonetic scripts. The Wade–Giles system was produced by Thomas Wade in 1859, and it was popular and used in English-language publications outside China until 1979. This Sin Wenz or New Writing was much more sophisticated than earlier alphabets. In 1940, several members attended a Border Region Sin Wenz Society convention. Mao Zedong and Zhu De, head of the army, both contributed their calligraphy for the masthead of the Sin Wenz Societys new journal. Outside the CCP, other prominent supporters included Sun Yat-sens son, Sun Fo, Cai Yuanpei, the countrys most prestigious educator, Tao Xingzhi, an educational reformer. Over thirty journals soon appeared written in Sin Wenz, plus large numbers of translations, biographies, some contemporary Chinese literature, and a spectrum of textbooks

12.
Shenzhen
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Shenzhen is a major city in Guangdong Province, China and one of the five largest and wealthiest cities of China. The city is located north of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and holds sub-provincial administrative status. Shenzhen was a town of 30,000 people on the route of the Kowloon–Canton Railway. That changed in 1979 when Shenzhen was promoted to city-status and in 1980 designated China’s first Special Economic Zone. According to the Government report for 2015, Shenzhen had transformed into a city with a population of 10,778,900, Shenzhen was one of the fastest-growing cities in the world during the 1990s and the 2000s. Shenzhen is a financial center in southern China. The city is home to the Shenzhen Stock Exchange as well as the headquarters of numerous high-tech companies, Shenzhen ranks 19th in the 2016 edition of the Global Financial Centres Index published by the Z/Yen Group and Qatar Financial Centre Authority. It also has one of the busiest container ports in the world, human habitation in Shenzhen dates back to ancient times. The earliest archaeological remains so far unearthed are shards from a site at Xiantouling on Dapeng Bay, from the Han dynasty onwards, the area around Shenzhen was a center of the salt monopoly, thus meriting special Imperial protection. Salt pans are still visible around the Pearl River area to the west of the city and are commemorated in the name of Yantian District, the settlement at Nantou was the political center of the area from early antiquity. In the year 331 AD, six counties covering most of modern southeastern Guangdong were merged into one province or “jun” named Dongguan with its center at Nantou. As well as being a center of the politically and fiscally critical salt trade, the main shipping route to India, Arabia and the Byzantine Empire started at Guangzhou. As early as the century, chronicles record the Nantou area as being a major commercial center. It was also as a defense center guarding the southern approaches to the Pearl River. Shenzhen was also involved in the surrounding the end of the Southern Song dynasty. The Imperial court, fleeing Kublai Khan’s forces, established itself in the Shenzhen area and he jumped off a cliff with Emperor Bing, aged 7, the last emperor of the Southern Song Dynasty strapped to his back, killing both. In the late 19th century the Chiu or Zhao clan in Hong Kong identified that Chiwan, the tomb, since restored, is still at the same location. Earliest known records that carried the name Shenzhen dates from 1410, local people called the drains in paddy fields “zhen”

13.
Dongguan
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Dongguan is a prefecture-level city in central Guangdong province, China. It is part of the Pearl River Delta megacity with more than 44.78 million inhabitants at the 2010 census spread over nine municipalities across an area of 17,573 square kilometres, Dongguans city administration is considered especially progressive in seeking foreign direct investment. Dongguan ranks behind only Shenzhen, Shanghai and Suzhou in exports among Chinese cities and it is also home to one of the worlds largest, though largely empty, shopping malls, the New South China Mall. The majority of the population speak Mandarin due to migrants from parts of the country. Although the earliest traces of habitation in the area stretch back 5,000 years. In 1839, at the outset of the First Opium War, large quantities of seized opium were destroyed in Humen, several of the major battles of the war were fought in this area. During the Second World War, the city served as the base for resistance against the Japanese occupation. Dongguan earned city status in 1985, and was upgraded to city status three years later. During this period the city changed its focus from a town into a manufacturing hub. The city ranked 13th in Forbes Chinas listing of the most innovative mainland cities, geographically, the city is mostly hilly to the east and flat in the west, with 115.98 kilometres of shoreline. It is positioned in the middle of the Guangzhou-Shenzhen economic corridor, of Dongguans total area, 27% is water, 25% forest land, and 13% arable land, while 35% of its land area has been fully developed. Dongguan had an estimated 6,949,800 inhabitants at the end of 2008, at the 2010 Census the population had expanded to 8,220,237. The number reached 8.29 million by the end of 2012, Dongguan is the hometown for many overseas Chinese, the family origin of over 700,000 people in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau and over 200,000 nationals living abroad. Dongguan has no county level but instead is divided into 32 towns, Dongguan has a humid subtropical climate, with abundant sunshine. It lies just south of the Tropic of Cancer, the average temperature is 23.3 °C throughout the year with average rainfall of 2,042.6 millimetres. Many foreign travellers to Dongguan fly into Hong Kong, which gives visa on arrival to citizens of over 170 countries, after landing, visitors must apply for a visa to enter mainland China. One can travel from Hong Kong to Dongguan by bus, ferry, Dongguan serves as one of the regional railway hubs in Guangdong, where the Guangzhou-Kowloon Railway, Guangzhou-Meizhou-Shantou Railway and the Beijing-Kowloon Railway converge. Rail services in and out of the city call at Dongguan railway station there are direct train services to Guangzhou East railway station in Guangzhou

14.
Shaoguan
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Shaoguan is a prefecture-level city in northern Guangdong Province, China, bordering Hunan to the northwest and Jiangxi to the northeast. It is home to the remains of the sixth Zen Buddhist patriarch Huineng. Its built-up or metro area made up of Zhenjiang and Wujiang urban districts was home to 688,229 inhabitants at the 2010 census, shaozhou was a prefecture under the Tang and Song. In 1589, Matteo Ricci relocated his mission house – the first ever Jesuit mission in mainland China – to Shaoguan after a fallout with the authorities in Zhaoqing, during World War II the city, then called Kukong, was the capital of Guangdong Province. In June 2009, Uyghurs and Han workers clashed at a toy factory in Shaoguan and it spans latitude 23° 05−25°31 N and longitude 112° 50−114°45 E. The city is located on the Jingguang Railway about 221 kilometres north of the capital of Guangzhou. Shaoguan is also accessible by road as it is adjacent to the G4 Beijing–Hong Kong–Macau Expressway as well as numerous other National Highways. At Shaoguan, the Wu River from the northwest and the Zhen River from the northeast join up to create the North River which flows south to Guangzhou, the downtown part of Shaoguan is located on a peninsula between the Wu and Zhen Rivers. The rivers are maintained at a constant level by a dam about 12 kilometres downstream from the city, the city has about 20 kilometres of tree-lined riverside esplanades along the banks of the rivers. There are seven bridges crossing the three rivers, winter begins dry and relatively sunny but becomes progressively cloudier and damper. Spring is the cloudiest and wettest season, with the sun shining less than 30% of the time, the annual rainfall is around 1,580 mm, much of it delivered from April thru June. The monthly 24-hour average temperature ranges from 10.2 °C in January to 29.0 °C in July, with monthly percent possible sunshine ranging from 16% in March to 54% in July, the city receives 1,617 hours of bright sunshine annually. Shaoguan has direct jurisdiction over 3 districts,2 county-level cities and 5 counties, to the south of the tower, at the other end of a pedestrian shopping street, the Dajian Monastery was founded in 660. Near Shaoguan is the town of Maba, home of relics and museum of the Maba Man, near Maba is Nanhua Temple, which was founded by Huineng, the Sixth Patriarch of Zen Buddhism. Shaoguan Iron and Steel is also located near Maba, danxia Mountain is located in Renhua County, Shaoguan. Northwest of Shaoguan, at the town of Pingshi, a stretch of river known as the Nine Torrents and Eighteen Shoals is a popular place for white-water rafting

15.
Sichuan
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In antiquity, Sichuan was the home of the ancient states of Ba and Shu. Their conquest by Qin strengthened it and paved the way for the First Emperors unification of China under the Qin Dynasty, during the Three Kingdoms era, Liu Beis Shu was based in Sichuan. The area was devastated in the 17th century by Zhang Xianzhongs rebellion and the areas subsequent Manchu conquest, during the Second World War, Chongqing served as the temporary capital of the Republic of China, making it the focus of Japanese bombing. It was one of the last mainland areas to fall to the Communists during the Chinese Civil War and was divided into four parts from 1949 to 1952, with Chongqing restored two years later. It suffered gravely during the Great Chinese Famine of 1959–61 but remained Chinas most populous province until Chongqing Municipality was again separated from it in 1997, the people of Sichuan speak a unique form of Mandarin, which took shape during the areas repopulation under the Ming. The family of dialects is now spoken by about 120 million people, in Modern Chinese, the name Sichuan has the meaning four rivers and this folk etymology is usually extended to list the provinces four major rivers, the Jialing, Jinsha, Min, and Tuo. In addition to its map and Wade-Giles forms, the name has also been irregularly romanized as Szű-chuan and Szechuan. In antiquity, the area of modern Sichuan was known to the Chinese as Ba and Shu, in reference to the ancient states of Ba and it was the refuge of the Tang court during the An Lushan Rebellion of the mid-8th century. The region had its own religious beliefs and worldview. The most important native states were those of Ba and Shu, Ba stretched into Sichuan from the Han Valley in Shaanxi and Hubei down the Jialing River as far as its confluence with the Yangtze at Chongqing. Shu occupied the valley of the Min, including Chengdu and other areas of western Sichuan, the existence of the early state of Shu was poorly recorded in the main historical records of China. It was, however, referred to in the Book of Documents as an ally of the Zhou and this site, believed to be an ancient city of Shu, was initially discovered by a local farmer in 1929 who found jade and stone artefacts. The Sichuan basin is surrounded by the Himalayas to the west, the Qin Mountains to the north, Qin armies finished their conquest of the kingdoms of Shu and Ba by 316 BC. Any written records and civil achievements of earlier kingdoms were destroyed, Qin administrators introduced improved agricultural technology. Li Bing, engineered the Dujiangyan irrigation system to control the Min River and this innovative hydraulic system was composed of movable weirs which could be adjusted for high or low water flow according to the season, to either provide irrigation or prevent floods. The increased agricultural output and taxes made the area a source of provisions, Sichuan was subjected to the autonomous control of kings named by the imperial family of Han Dynasty. Shu-Han claimed to be the successor to the Han Dynasty, in 263, the Jin dynasty of North China, conquered the Kingdom of Shu-Han as its first step on the path to unify China again, under their rule. Salt production becomes a business in Ziliujing District

16.
Jiangxi
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Jiangxi is a province in the Peoples Republic of China, located in the southeast of the country. The name Jiangxi derives from the circuit administrated under the Tang dynasty in 733, the short name for Jiangxi is 赣, for the Gan River which runs across from the south to the north and flows into the Yangtze River. Jiangxi is also alternately called Ganpo Dadi which literally means the Great Land of Gan, Jiangxi is centered on the Gan River valley, which historically provided the main north-south transport route of south China. The corridor along the Gan River is one of the few easily traveled routes through the otherwise mountainous, as a result, Jiangxi has been strategically important throughout much of Chinas history. Jiangxi was outside the sphere of influence of early Chinese civilization during the Shang dynasty and it is likely that peoples collectively known as the Baiyue inhabited the region. During the Spring and Autumn period, the part of modern Jiangxi formed the western frontier of the state of Wu. After Wu was conquered by the state of Yue in 473 BC, Chu subjugated Yue in 333 BC. In 223 BC, when Qin conquered Chu, majority of Jiangxi area was recorded to be put under Jiujiang Commandary situated in Shouchun, however the commandary was ineffective and ended shortly when Qin falls. It was named after the Yuzhang River, the name of Gan River. Gan has become the abbreviation of the province, in 201, eight counties were added to the original seven of Qin, and three more were established in later years. Throughout most of the Han dynasty the commanderys eighteen counties covered most of the province of Jiangxi. The county seats of Nanchang, Gan, Yudu, Luling among others were located at the sites of major cities. Other counties, however, have moved or abolished in later centuries. Under the reign of Emperor Wu of the Han dynasty, Yuzhang Commandery was assigned to Yangzhou Province, in 291 AD, during the Western Jin dynasty, Jiangxi became its own Zhou called Jiangzhou. During the Southern and Northern Dynasties, Jiangxi was under the control of the dynasties. During the Sui dynasty, there were seven commanderies and twenty-four counties in Jiangxi, during the Tang dynasty, another commandery and fourteen counties were added. Commanderies were then abolished, becoming zhou, circuits were established during the Tang dynasty as a new top-level administrative division. At first Jiangxi was part of the Jiangnan Circuit, in 733, this circuit was divided into western and eastern halves

17.
Middle Chinese
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The fanqie method used to indicate pronunciation in these dictionaries, though an improvement on earlier methods, proved awkward in practice. The mid 12th-century Yunjing and other rime tables incorporate a more sophisticated, the rime tables attest to a number of sound changes that had occurred over the centuries following the publication of the Qieyun. Linguists sometimes refer to the system of the Qieyun as Early Middle Chinese, the dictionaries and tables describe pronunciations in relative terms, but do not give their actual sounds. The Swedish linguist Bernard Karlgren believed that the recorded a speech standard of the capital Changan of the Sui and Tang dynasties. This composite system contains important information for the reconstruction of the system of Old Chinese phonology. The Middle Chinese system is used as a framework for the study. Branches of the Chinese family such as Mandarin, Yue and Wu can be treated as divergent developments from the Qieyun system. The reconstruction of Middle Chinese phonology is largely dependent upon detailed descriptions in a few original sources, the most important of these is the Qieyun rime dictionary and its revisions. The Qieyun is often used together with interpretations in Song dynasty rime tables such as the Yunjing, Qiyinlue, Chinese scholars of the Northern and Southern dynasties period were concerned with the correct recitation of the classics. Various schools produced dictionaries to codify reading pronunciations and the associated rhyme conventions of regulated verse, the Qieyun was an attempt to merge the distinctions in six earlier dictionaries, which were eclipsed by its success and are no longer extant. It was accepted as the standard reading pronunciation during the Tang dynasty, the Qieyun is thus the oldest surviving rime dictionary and the main source for the pronunciation of characters in Early Middle Chinese. The rime dictionaries organize Chinese characters by their pronunciation, according to a hierarchy of tone, rhyme, the fanqie system uses multiple equivalent characters to represent each particular initial, and likewise for finals. The categories of initials and finals actually represented were first identified by the Cantonese scholar Chen Li in an analysis published in his Qièyùn kǎo. The Qieyun classified homonyms under 193 rhyme classes, each of which is placed one of the four tones. A single rhyme class may contain multiple finals, generally differing only in the medial or in so-called chongniu doublets, the Yunjing is the oldest of the so-called rime tables, which provide a more detailed phonological analysis of the system contained in the Qieyun. However, the analysis shows some influence from LMC, which needs to be taken into account when interpreting difficult aspects of the system. The Yunjing is organized into 43 tables, each covering several Qieyun rhyme classes, and classified as, One of 16 broad rhyme classes, each described as either inner or outer. The meaning of this is debated but it has suggested that it refers to the height of the main vowel, with outer finals having an open vowel

18.
Bao'an District
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Baoan County was the predecessor of the modern city of Shenzhen, Guangdong, China. Baoan District is one of the six districts comprising Shenzhen, a city in Guangdong. It is one of the two districts formerly lying outside the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone, the other being Longgang, formerly known as Baoan County, after being integrated into Shenzhen in 1979, Baoan was reverted into county status in 1981. Finally Baoan district was established in January 1,1993, two new districts were separated from Baoan district, namely Guangming and Longhua new districts, in 2007 and 2011 respectively. In 2010, it was returned to be a part of Shenzhen Special Economic Zone, Longhua was separated from Baoan and became a district on 11 October 2016. The district had a population of 2,736,500 in 2014, about 85% of Baoans population are migrants from other parts of China, most speaking Mandarin. Hence this made Mandarin the primary Chinese variety spoken in the district, cantonese is also widely spoken, between locals and migrants from around Guangdong. Baoan has a notoriously bad safety record, since the turn of the millennium, the district has seen a string of high-profile abductions, robberies, and other cases of violent crime. However, in the last 4 years, this has become less of an issue with a police presence. Foreigners rarely feel threatened when going about their lives in Baoan District. There is also a service industry. Agriculture, which used to dominate the economy, has diminished in recent years, like many parts of Shenzhen, high-rises can be found all over Baoan. Four airlines are headquartered on the grounds of Shenzhen Baoan International Airport, Shenzhen Airlines, Jade Cargo International, Shenzhen Donghai Airlines, the hotel chain Vienna Hotels has its headquarters in the Longhua New District in Baoan District. Shenzhen Baoan International Airport is situated in this district, Shenzhen metro lines 1,4, and 5 go through the district at some point. The Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong High-Speed Railway cuts through the north to south

19.
Mandarin Chinese
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Mandarin is a group of related varieties of Chinese spoken across most of northern and southwestern China. The group includes the Beijing dialect, the basis of Standard Mandarin or Standard Chinese, because most Mandarin dialects are found in the north, the group is sometimes referred to as the Northern dialects. Many local Mandarin varieties are not mutually intelligible, nevertheless, Mandarin is often placed first in any list of languages by number of native speakers. Most Mandarin varieties have four tones, the final stops of Middle Chinese have disappeared in most of these varieties, but some have merged them as a final glottal stop. Many Mandarin varieties, including the Beijing dialect, retain retroflex initial consonants, the capital has been within the Mandarin area for most of the last millennium, making these dialects very influential. Some form of Mandarin has served as a lingua franca since the 14th century. In the early 20th century, a form based on the Beijing dialect. Standard Chinese is the language of the Peoples Republic of China and Taiwan. It is also one of the most frequently used varieties of Chinese among Chinese diaspora communities internationally, the English word mandarin originally meant an official of the Ming and Qing empires. Since their native varieties were often mutually unintelligible, these officials communicated using a Koiné language based on various northern varieties, when Jesuit missionaries learned this standard language in the 16th century, they called it Mandarin, from its Chinese name Guānhuà, or language of the officials. In everyday English, Mandarin refers to Standard Chinese, which is called simply Chinese. Standard Chinese is based on the particular Mandarin dialect spoken in Beijing, with some lexical and it is the official spoken language of the Peoples Republic of China, the official language of the Republic of China, and one of the four official languages of the Republic of Singapore. It also functions as the language of instruction in Mainland China and it is one of the six official languages of the United Nations, under the name Chinese. Chinese speakers refer to the standard language as Pǔtōnghuà in Mainland China, Guóyǔ in Taiwan, or Huáyǔ in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Philippines. Linguists use the term Mandarin to refer to the group of dialects spoken in northern and southwestern China. The alternative term Běifānghuà, or Northern dialects, is used less and less among Chinese linguists, by extension, the term Old Mandarin or Early Mandarin is used by linguists to refer to the northern dialects recorded in materials from the Yuan dynasty. Native speakers who are not academic linguists may not recognize that the variants they speak are classified in linguistics as members of Mandarin in a broader sense, the hundreds of modern local varieties of Chinese developed from regional variants of Old Chinese and Middle Chinese. Traditionally, seven groups of dialects have been recognized

20.
Fengshun County
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Fengshun is a county in Meizhou City, Guangdong Province, southern China. Meizhou is noted for its large Hakka population, while Fengshun is in the southernmost of its counties bordering the Jieyang, Fengshun Countys executive, legislature and judiciary are based in Tangkeng, along with its CPC and PSB branches. The county is responsible for the administration of 16 towns and one Township Enterprise

21.
Lufeng, Guangdong
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Lufeng, formerly romanized as Lukfung, is a county-level county-level city in Guangdong, China, administered as a part of the prefecture-level city of Shanwei. It lies on the mainland on coast of the South China Sea east of Hong Kong, under the Qing, the area was known as Lufeng County. Together with neighboring Haifeng, it formed the short-lived Hailufeng Soviet in 1927 and it was later promoted to county-level city status. The area rose to prominence in the early 21st century as a scene of unrest, fresh protests broke out in December, when one of the village leaders died in the police custody. The police blocked the roads leading to the village, as of 2005 years end, the city comprises three urban subdistricts and 17 towns. These are organised into 47 neighbourhood committees and 280 village committees, the citys executive, legislature and judiciary are located in the Donghai Subdistrict, together with the CPC subbranch and PSB suboffice. Wukan Village, site of the Wukan protests, is located in the Donghai subdistrict. Therefore, dialects of both Min Nan and Hakka are spoken, in addition to Mandarin, which is used in official, the Hailufeng dialect, however, only refers to the Hokkien variant. Triad Societies, Vol.5, Abingdon, Routledge, reprinted 2000

22.
Heyuan
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Héyuán is a prefecture-level city of Guangdong province in the Peoples Republic of China. At the 2010 census, its population was 2,950,195 whom 903,871 lived in the area made of Yuancheng urban District. Zijin County itself is quickly being conurbated in the agglomeration, the majority of the people are Hakka. The city includes many rainforests and the largest lake in Guangdong, Xinfengjiang Reservoir, the literal meaning of the citys name is origin of the river. It has recently been officially titled as the Hometown of the Dinosaur in China, Heyuan is located in the north-east region of Guangdong, upper reach of Dong River at its confluence with the Xingeng River. Its latitude spans 23° 10–24°50 N, and longitude 114° 13–115°35 E and it borders Huizhou to the south, Ganzhou to the north, Meizhou to the east and Shaoguan to the west. Heyuan is a hub that connects the coastal areas of Guangdong. Heyuan is rich in resources and fertile land. There are 1,000 km2 of cultivated land,13,600 km2 of hilly land, many mineral deposits such as iron ore, tungsten, tin, fluorite are found in Heyuan. Heyuan has a humid subtropical climate, with short, mild to warm winters. Winter begins sunny and dry but becomes progressively wetter and cloudier, spring is generally overcast and often rainy, while summer continues to be rainy though is much sunnier, there are 9.1 days annually with 50 mm of rainfall. The monthly 24-hour average temperature ranges from 13.6 °C in January to 29.2 °C in July, the annual rainfall is just over 2,000 mm, and is delivered in bulk from April to June. With monthly percent possible sunshine ranging from 23% in March to 55% in October and November, the citys museum boasts the Guinness World Record for the largest collection of dinosaur eggs, with 10,008 individual samples as of 2004. Dinosaur skeletons and fossilized footprints have also found nearby. In the great majority of Heyuan areas, Hakka Chinese is in general use, also, in some areas on the banks of the Dongjiang, Dongjiang Bendihua is in general use. Its classification is disputed between the Yuezhong division of Hakka and the Huihe division of Yue, Heyuan City administers Yuancheng District, Dongyuan County, Heping County, Longchuan County, Zijin County and Lianping County. The total area is 15,800 square kilometres, Heyuan city and its districts have a population of 3.2194 million. The municipality seat is in Yuancheng District, Heyuan city is a major economic and transportation hub for the Beijing-Kowloon Railway and the Guangzhou-Meizhou-Shantou Railway which crosses the city

23.
Longchuan County, Guangdong
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Longchuan County is a county of northeastern Guangdong province, China, bordering Jiangxi to the north and on the upper reaches of the Dong and Han Rivers. It is under the administration of Heyuan City, and in 2004 had a population of 870,000 living in an area of 3,089 km2. Bordering county-level divisions are Xingning and Wuhua County to the east, Heping County and Dongyuan County to the south and west, Longchuan administers 24 towns, Longchuan has a developed highway and railway network. Major roads include the China National Highway 205 and Guangdong Provincial Highway 120, the Beijing–Kowloon, Guangzhou–Meizhou–Shantou and Zhangping–Longchuan Railways intersect in Longchuan, making it an important railway hub for the Lingnan region

24.
Xingning, Guangdong
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Xingning is also the era name for Emperor Ai of the Jin dynasty. Xingning is a city, under the jurisdiction of Meizhou City, Guangdong Province. The second largest city in east Guangdong, Xingning has an area of 2,105 square kilometres, Xingning was formerly known as Qichang. Xingning county was established in 331 CE, later becoming the capital of the 10th-century Southern Han Dynasty, from its previous long-established status a county, in 1991 Xingning was upgraded to a county-level city within the municipal jurisdiction of Meizhou. Shenguang Hill Xingning Academy Heshui Reservoir List of township-level divisions of Guangdong Life in Xingning Xingning Government website Satellite photo of Xingning from National Geographic

25.
Meizhou
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Meizhou is a prefecture-level city in eastern Guangdong province, Peoples Republic of China. It has an area of 15,864.51 km2, and it comprises Meijiang District, Xingning City and six counties. Its built-up or metro area made up of 2 urban districts was home to 935,516 inhabitants at the 2010 census, the name Meizhou comes from the Mei River and the Chinese name for the plum blossom. Meizhou was established as the prefecture of Jingzhou during the Southern Han and it became Meizhou at the time of Northern Song dynasty and Jiaying Prefecture during the Qing dynasty. After several subsequent shifts of jurisdiction, it became Meizhou City in 1988, Meizhou is now a noted historical and cultural city. Meizhou is located in the northeast of Guangdong Province, bordering Fujian Province in the northeast, the complex geological structure was formed mainly from granite, spouting rocks, metamorphic rock, shale, sandstone, red rock and limestone. Its administrative area ranges in latitude from 23°23 to 24°56 N and in longitude from 115°18 to 116°56 E, Meizhou has a humid subtropical climate, with short, mild, overcast winters and long, very hot, humid summers. The monthly daily average temperature in January is 12.4 °C, from April to June, rainfall is the heaviest and most frequent. Though striking typhoons do not affect the area as much as the coast, the municipal government, Intermediate Court, CPC office and Public Security Bureau are located in the Jiangnan Subdistrict of the Meijiang District, on the right bank of Mei River. Meizhou is rich in mineral and tourism resources and it has 48 kinds of minerals including coal, iron, limestone, rare clay and porcelain clay amongst others. Of these reserves manganese is ranked first in Guangdong Province, Meizhou has plenty of water resources, hot springs and certified mineral waters. There are tourism resources such as historic sites constructed during the Tang Dynasty, former residences of notable figures, natural scenery of all kinds. Meizhou is a hub for the three provinces of Guangdong, Fujian, and Jiangxi and the bridge connecting the coastal and the inland areas. State Highways 205 and 206 run across the city, guangzhou-Meizhou-Shantou Railway and Meizhou-Kanshi Railway pass through the city while expressways, state, provincial county and village highways extend to all parts. The city is served by the regional Meixian Airport, with regular air routes to Guangzhou, by water, the Mei River and Han River reach Chaozhou and Shantou. Meizhou is considered the center for standard Hakka dialect, along with the neighboring Mei County, Hakkas are a unique ethnic group of Han Chinese originally from around the Yellow River area, who later migrated south to avoid the chaos of war centuries ago. Due to hostility towards the new immigrants, many were forced into the regions of Guangdong Province. This migratory tradition has continued with the redistribution of Hakka people to the most remote parts of the world, many people in Meizhou emigrated during the last century to earn money for their families, with some returning to build in their hometowns

26.
Labial consonant
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Labial consonants are consonants in which one or both lips are the active articulator. The two common labial articulations are bilabials, articulated using both lips, and labiodentals, articulated with the lip against the upper teeth, both of which are present in English. A third labial articulation is dentolabials, articulated with the lip against the lower teeth. Generally precluded are linguolabials, in which the tip of the contacts the posterior side of the upper lip, making them coronals, though sometimes. The most common distribution between bilabials and labiodentals is the English one, in which the stops, and, are bilabial and the fricatives, bilabial fricatives and the bilabial approximant do not exist in English, but they occur in many languages. For example, the Spanish consonant written b or v is pronounced, lip rounding, or labialization, is a common approximant-like co-articulatory feature. English /w/ is a labialized velar approximant, which is far more common than the purely labial approximant. In the languages of the Caucasus, labialized dorsals like /kʷ/ and /qʷ/ are very common, very few languages, however, make a distinction purely between bilabials and labiodentals, making labial usually a sufficient specification of a languages phonemes. One exception is Ewe, which has both kinds of fricatives, but the labiodentals are produced with greater articulatory force, while most languages make use of purely labial phonemes, a few generally lack them. Examples are Tlingit, Eyak, Wichita, and the Iroquoian languages except Cherokee, all of these languages have seen labials introduced under the influence of English. Many of these languages are transcribed with /w/ and with labialized consonants, however, it is not always clear to what extent the lips are involved in such sounds. In the Iroquoian languages, for example, /w/ involved little apparent rounding of the lips, see the Tillamook language for an example of a language with rounded consonants and vowels that do not have any actual labialization. Labialization List of phonetics topics Ladefoged, Peter, Maddieson, Ian, the Sounds of the Worlds Languages. McDorman, Richard E. Labial Instability in Sound Change, Explanations for the Loss of /p/

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Alveolar consonant
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Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth. Alveolar consonants may be articulated with the tip of the tongue, as in English, or with the flat of the tongue just above the tip, as in French and Spanish. The laminal alveolar articulation is often called dental, because the tip of the tongue can be seen near to or touching the teeth. The International Phonetic Alphabet does not have symbols for the alveolar consonants. Rather, the symbol is used for all coronal places of articulation that are not palatalized like English palato-alveolar sh. To disambiguate, the bridge may be used for a dental consonant, note that differs from dental in that the former is a sibilant and the latter is not. Differs from postalveolar in being unpalatalized, the bare letters, etc. cannot be assumed to specifically represent alveolars. If it is necessary to specify a consonant as alveolar, a diacritic from the Extended IPA may be used, the letters ⟨s, t, n, l⟩ are frequently called alveolar, and the language examples below are all alveolar sounds. Alveolar consonants are transcribed in the IPA as follows, The alveolar or dental consonants and are, along with, nonetheless, there are a few languages that lack them. A few languages on Bougainville Island and around Puget Sound, such as Makah, lack nasals and therefore, colloquial Samoan, however, lacks both and, but it has a lateral alveolar approximant /l/. In Standard Hawaiian, is an allophone of /k/, but /l/, in labioalveolars, the lower lip contacts the alveolar ridge. Such sounds are typically the result of a severe overbite, the Sounds of the Worlds Languages

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Retroflex consonant
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A retroflex consonant is a coronal consonant where the tongue has a flat, concave, or even curled shape, and is articulated between the alveolar ridge and the hard palate. They are sometimes referred to as cerebral consonants, especially in Indology, other terms occasionally encountered are domal and cacuminal. The Latin-derived word retroflex means bent back, some consonants are pronounced with the tongue fully curled back so that articulation involves the underside of the tongue tip. These sounds are described as true retroflex consonants. Retroflex consonants, like other consonants, come in several varieties. The tongue may be flat or concave, or even with the tip curled back. The point of contact on the tongue may be with the tip, with the blade, the point of contact on the roof of the mouth may be with the alveolar ridge, the area behind the alveolar ridge, or the hard palate. Finally, both sibilant and nonsibilant consonants can have a retroflex articulation, the greatest variety of combinations occurs with sibilants, because for these, small changes in tongue shape and position cause significant changes in the resulting sound. Retroflex sounds in general have a duller, lower-pitched sound than other alveolar or postalveolar consonants, and especially the grooved alveolar sibilants. The farther back the point of contact with the roof of the mouth, the concave is the shape of the tongue. The main combinations normally observed are, Laminal post-alveolar, with a flat tongue and these occur, for example, in Polish cz, sz, ż, dż and Mandarin zh, ch, sh, r. Apical post-alveolar, with a somewhat concave tongue and these occur, for example, in Hindi and other Indo-Aryan languages. Subapical palatal, with a highly concave tongue and these occur particularly in the Dravidian languages. These are the dullest and lowest-pitched type, and when following a vowel often add strong r-coloring to the vowel and these are not a place of articulation, as the IPA chart implies, but a shape of the tongue analogous to laminal and apical. Apical alveolar, with a somewhat concave tongue and these occur, for example, in peninsular Spanish and Basque. These sounds dont quite fit on the front-to-back, laminal-to-subapical continuum, with a relatively dull, the subapical sounds are sometimes called true retroflex because of the curled-back shape of the tongue, while the other sounds sometimes go by other names. For example, Ladefoged and Maddieson prefer to call the laminal post-alveolar sounds flat post-alveolar, the retroflex approximant /ɻ/ is an allophone of the alveolar approximant /ɹ/ in many dialects of American English, particularly in the Midwestern United States. Polish and Russian possess retroflex sibilants, but no stops or liquids at this place of articulation, in African languages retroflex consonants are also very rare, reportedly occurring in a few Nilo-Saharan languages

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Palatal consonant
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Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate. Consonants with the tip of the tongue curled back against the palate are called retroflex, the most common type of palatal consonant is the extremely common approximant, which ranks as among the ten most common sounds in the worlds languages. The nasal is also common, occurring in around 35 percent of the languages, in most of which its equivalent obstruent is not the stop. Consonants with other primary articulations may be palatalized, that is, for example, English has such a palatal component, although its primary articulation involves the tip of the tongue and the upper gum. In phonology, alveolo-palatal, palatoalveolar and palatovelar consonants are commonly grouped as palatals, sometimes palatalized alveolars or dentals can be analyzed in this manner as well. Palatal consonants can be distinguished from palatalized consonants and consonant clusters of a consonant, palatal and palatalized consonants are both single phonemes, whereas a sequence of a consonant and is logically two phonemes. Irish distinguishes the palatal nasal /ɲ/ from the alveolar nasal /nʲ/. In fact, some conservative Irish dialects have two palatalized alveolar nasals, distinguished as fortis vs. lenis. Also, languages that have sequences of consonants and /j/, but no separate palatal or palatalized consonants and this is due to the principle of least effort and is an example of the general phenomenon of coarticulation. For a table of examples of palatal /ɲ ʎ/ in the Romance languages, palatal consonants are written this way in the International Phonetic Alphabet, Palatalization Palatalization Place of articulation List of phonetics topics Ladefoged, Peter, Maddieson, Ian. The Sounds of the Worlds Languages

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Velar consonant
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Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth. They often become automatically fronted, that is partly or completely palatal before a front vowel, and retracted. Palatalised velars are sometimes referred to as palatovelars, many languages also have labialized velars, such as, in which the articulation is accompanied by rounding of the lips. There are also labial-velar consonants, which are articulated at the velum and at the lips. This distinction disappears with the approximant since labialization involves adding of a labial approximant articulation to a sound, a velar trill or tap is not possible, see the shaded boxes on the table of pulmonic consonants. The velar consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are, The velar consonant is the most common consonant in human languages, the only languages recorded to lack velars may be Xavante, Tahitian, Wutung, Vanimo, Nori, and Waimiri-Atroarí. An areal feature of the Pacific Northwest coast is that historical *k became palatalized in many languages, likewise, historical *k’ has become and historical *x has become, there was no *g or *ŋ. In the Northwest Caucasian languages, historical * has also become palatalized, becoming /kʲ/ in Ubykh, in both regions the languages retain a labiovelar series as well as uvular consonants. In the languages of those families that retain plain velars, both the plain and labialized velars are pre-velar, perhaps to make them distinct from the uvulars which may be post-velar. Prevelar consonants are susceptible to palatalization, a similar system, contrasting *kʲ with *kʷ and leaving *k marginal at best, is reconstructed for Proto-Indo-European. Apart from the stop, no other velar consonant is particularly common, even the. Of course, there can be no phoneme /ɡ/ in a language that lacks voiced stops, like Mandarin Chinese, of the languages surveyed in the World Atlas of Language Structures, about 10% of languages that otherwise have /p b t d k/ are missing /ɡ/. Pirahã has both a and a phonetically, however, the does not behave as other consonants, and the argument has been made that it is phonemically /hi/, leaving Pirahã with only /ɡ/ as an underlyingly velar consonant. Hawaiian does not distinguish from, ⟨k⟩ tends toward at the beginning of utterances, before, since Hawaiian has no, and ⟨w⟩ varies between and, it is not clearly meaningful to say that Hawaiian has phonemic velar consonants. Several Khoisan languages have limited numbers or distributions of pulmonic velar consonants, khoekhoe, for example, does not allow velars in medial or final position, but in Juǀhoan velars are rare even in initial position. Normal velar consonants are dorso-velar, The dorsum of the rises to contact the velum of the roof of the mouth. In disordered speech there are also velo-dorsal stops, with the articulation, The velum lowers to contact the tongue. In the extensions to the IPA for disordered speech, these are transcribed by reversing the IPA letter for a velar consonant, velarization Place of articulation List of phonetics topics Ladefoged, Peter, Maddieson, Ian

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Glottal consonant
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Glottal consonants are consonants using the glottis as their primary articulation. However, glottal consonants behave as consonants in many languages. For example, in Literary Arabic, most words are formed from a root C-C-C consisting of three consonants, which are inserted into templates such as /CaːCiC/ or /maCCuːC/. The glottal consonants /h/ and /ʔ/ can occupy any of the three root consonant slots, just like normal consonants such as /k/ or /n/, glottal consonants in the International Phonetic Alphabet, In many languages, the fricatives are not true fricatives. This is a usage of the word. They instead represent transitional states of the glottis without a place of articulation. Is a breathy-voiced transition, and could be transcribed as, the glottal stop occurs in many languages. Often all vocalic onsets are preceded by a stop, for example in German. The Hawaiian language writes the glottal stop as the ‘okina ‘, because the glottis is necessarily closed for the glottal stop, it cannot be voiced. So-called voiced glottal stops are not full stops, but rather creaky voiced glottal approximants that may be transcribed and they occur as the intervocalic allophone of glottal stop in many languages. Gimi contrasts /ʔ/ and /ʔ̞/, corresponding to /k/ and /ɡ/ in related languages, glottalic consonant Glottalization Place of articulation Index of phonetics articles Guttural Ladefoged, Peter, Maddieson, Ian. The Sounds of the Worlds Languages

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Nasal consonant
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Examples of nasals in English are and, in words such as nose and mouth. Nasal occlusives are nearly universal in human languages, there are also other kinds of nasal consonants in some languages. Nearly all nasal consonants are nasal occlusives, in which air escapes through the nose but not through the mouth, the oral cavity still acts as a resonance chamber for the sound. Rarely, non-occlusive consonants may be nasalized, most nasals are voiced, and in fact, the nasal sounds and are among the most common sounds cross-linguistically. Voiceless nasals occur in a few such as Burmese, Welsh, Icelandic. In terms of acoustics, nasals are sonorants, which means that they do not significantly restrict the escape of air, however, nasals are also obstruents in their articulation because the flow of air through the mouth is blocked. This duality, a sonorant airflow through the nose along with an obstruction in the mouth, for example, nasals tend to pattern with other sonorants such as and, but in many languages, they may develop from or into stops. Acoustically, nasals have bands of energy at around 200 and 2,000 Hz.1, ^ The symbol ⟨n⟩ is commonly used to represent the dental nasal as well, rather than ⟨n̪⟩, as it is rarely distinguished from the alveolar nasal. Examples of languages containing nasal occlusives, The voiced retroflex nasal is is a sound in Languages of India. Many Germanic languages, including German, Dutch, English and Swedish, as well as varieties of Chinese such as Mandarin and Cantonese, have, tamil has a six-fold distinction between, and. Catalan, Occitan, Spanish, and Italian have, as phonemes, nevertheless, in several American dialects of Spanish, there is no palatal nasal but only a palatalized nasal, as in English canyon. In Brazilian Portuguese and Angolan Portuguese, written ⟨nh⟩, is pronounced as, a nasal palatal approximant. Semivowels in Portuguese often nasalize before and always after nasal vowels, resulting in, what would be coda nasal occlusives in other West Iberian languages is only slightly pronounced before dental consonants. Outside this environment the nasality is spread over the vowel or become a nasal diphthong, the Mapos Buang language of New Guinea has an unusual three-way dorsal distinction between, and uvular. The presence of on a level is extremely rare cross-lingually, especially when the language also has other phonemic dorsal nasals present as in the case of Mapos Buang. The term nasal occlusive is generally abbreviated to nasal, however, there are also nasalized fricatives, nasalized flaps, nasal glides, and nasal vowels, as in French, Portuguese, and Polish. In the IPA, nasal vowels and nasalized consonants are indicated by placing a tilde over the vowel or consonant in question, French sang, a few languages have phonemic voiceless nasal occlusives. Among them are Icelandic, Faroese, Burmese, Jalapa Mazatec, Kildin Sami, Welsh, iaai of New Caledonia has an unusually large number of them, with /m̥ m̥ʷ n̪̊ ɳ̊ ɲ̊ ŋ̊/, along with a number of voiceless approximants

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Bilabial nasal
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The bilabial nasal is a type of consonantal sound used in almost all spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨m⟩, the bilabial nasal occurs in English, and it is the sound represented by m in map and rum. It occurs nearly universally, and few languages are known to lack this sound, features of the bilabial nasal, Its manner of articulation is occlusive, which means it is produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract. Because the consonant is nasal, the blocked airflow is redirected through the nose. Its place of articulation is bilabial, which means it is articulated with both lips and its phonation is voiced, which means the vocal cords vibrate during the articulation. It is a consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the nose. Because the sound is not produced with airflow over the tongue, the airstream mechanism is pulmonic, which means it is articulated by pushing air solely with the lungs and diaphragm, as in most sounds

The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin …

Image: Cardinal vowels Jones x ray

The authors of textbooks or similar publications often create revised versions of the IPA chart to express their own preferences or needs. The image displays one such version. Only the black symbols are part of the IPA; common additional symbols are in grey.